Love affair between AMD and GloFo cools

Sources close to the foundry action here in Las Vegas suggest that the tryst between AMD and GlobalFoundries (GloFo) is set to founder at the end of this year.

Relationships between AMD and GloFo haven’t been brilliant after some setbacks with the production of processors. Our sources said that it was unlikely that AMD would use GloFo to shrink the die size from 32 nanometers, meaning that another foundry is set to take up the task of producing microprocessors.

GlobalFoundries was spun off from AMD and was expected to grab the lion’s share of the business. After the spin-off, GloFo acquired Chartered Semi, based in Singapore.

It doesn’t mean curtains for GloFo though – it will just mean the business will be re-aligned and will compete with other foundries for customers. Chips are not going to go away any time soon.

The likely beneficiary from the freeze in relationships between AMD and its spun-off foundry is expected to be TSMC. AMD has a relationship with TSMC already.